


Whatever You Want

by RetroactiveCon



Series: Praying That It'll Be You [14]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Consent Issues, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Past Hartley Rathaway/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21861256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: Given the choice, Barry prefers Hartley to be on top. Hartley is painstakingly careful; whether they’re playing it safe or pushing Barry’s limits, he trusts him completely. Flipping the script every once in a while is fun, but it leaves Barry off-balance because he knows there are things Hartley can’t or won’t tell him. So, for the most part, he plays it safe.Unwisely, he makes an exception.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Hartley Rathaway
Series: Praying That It'll Be You [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562548
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

Given the choice, Barry prefers Hartley to be on top. Hartley is painstakingly careful; whether they’re playing it safe or pushing Barry’s limits, he trusts him completely. Flipping the script every once in a while is fun, but it leaves Barry off-balance because he knows there are things Hartley can’t or won’t tell him. So, for the most part, he plays it safe. 

Unwisely, he makes an exception. He should have known better, but he hasn’t been able to get the idea out of his head for a week. (A week ago, Hartley bound and gagged him, pressed a vibrator right up against his prostate, stood back and watched him go to pieces. All the while, he’d kept up a running commentary about how wanton Barry looked, what a slut he was, and how much he needed it. Barry had no idea being so harshly taunted would make him come like that.) Admittedly, he’s not comfortable saying everything Hartley had said, but he takes a shy stab at what could generously be called ‘humiliation.’ 

This was the worst thing he could possibly have done. 

His first inkling of what a bad choice this was arrives not during the game but after. When he opens his eyes, Hartley is curled against the pillows, watching him with strangely absent eyes. Barry reaches out to him on instinct, confused by the distance between them. “Hart?” 

“Hey, sweet boy.” Hartley laces their fingers together. “Was that good for you?” 

Barry nods. The longer he looks, the more certain he becomes that he did something terrible without realizing it. “Yeah, but what about for you?”

Hartley blinks. “Does it matter?” 

That’s more than his customary surprise at being asked; it’s as good as dismissal. Barry recoils. “I did something wrong.” 

“No, of course not.” Hartley makes a show of burrowing into the pillows. He’s playing at being comfortable, but every line of his body is tense. “I told you to do whatever you wanted to me. There isn’t a ‘wrong.’” 

His matter-of-fact tone hits Barry like a physical blow. “I say that too!” he protests. “Hartley, it’s just for play! Please—please tell me you didn’t let me keep going…”

Hartley shrugs. In slow, almost unnoticeable increments, he’s shrinking away from Barry’s touch. Barry lets him go, knowing how sensitive he becomes to touch when he’s upset. “I gave you permission. What was I going to do, tell you to stop?”

“Yeah, I was counting on it!” Barry sits up and drags in a deep breath. Getting upset, even out of worry, will only make Hartley more defensive. “I was only willing to get on top because I trusted you to tell me if I did something wrong. I trust you to stop every time I tell you something isn’t right, and you do. Why wouldn’t you do the same for me?” 

Hartley stares at him blankly, not as though the answer should be obvious but as though he hasn’t thought about it before. “…You stop saying no if you learn no one hears you,” he says slowly. 

It’s the worst sort of confirmation for what he’s suspected for a long time. Guilt writhes in his chest, temporarily stealing his breath. “I did something he did, didn’t I?”

Hartley doesn’t ask for clarification about who ‘he’ is. His resigned expression is enough confirmation for Barry. “Wells—Thawne—used to tell me I was such a slut that if he didn’t do as he pleased with me, I’d crawl into the bed of the first man who gave me a kind word. Not inaccurate, as it turns out,” he adds, indicating the bedroom with a crooked smile. “I didn’t mind, I wasn’t going to make you stop over a little dirty talk…”

“You were upset!” Barry wants to embrace him but doubts he’s ready to be touched. “Of course I would have stopped. No questions, no nothing, just stopped.” 

Hartley shrugs. “It didn’t matter. You’re sweet, but I’m fine, really.” 

With an effort, Barry keeps quiet. By now, he knows better than to push Hartley for more than he’s willing to give. After a moment, unbidden, Hartley offers, “He made me believe love meant never saying ‘no.’ If I could do that for him, how much more should I do for you?”

Barry shakes his head. He remembers all too keenly what it felt like to have Thawne-as-Wells’ attention; he would have done almost anything to keep it. For Hartley, who had no one else, that feeling must have been multiplied tenfold. “That’s not love, Hartley. You hear me when I say no because you want me safe. I’ll do the same for you.” 

“No,” Hartley says flatly. Only a faint glimmer in his eyes lets Barry know he’s joking. 

“That’s a start.” It isn’t enough to convince him that Hartley will, at need, say ‘no.’ That’s a conversation they’ll need to have multiple times. He’s still grateful Hartley told him this much.


	2. Chapter 2

Hartley never meant to tell Barry about the way Thawne treated him. To be sure, he’d told Barry about their sexual relationship, about how Thawne groomed him from the moment he joined STAR Labs, because Barry was struggling with his twisted mentor-student relationship with Thawne and Hartley wanted him to know he understood. Telling him about the _extent_ of the grooming (or worse, what happened after he was fired): no. He brought it on himself—he doesn’t need Barry’s sympathy. 

The problem isn’t keeping the secret. The problem is not confessing everything once he tells Barry the crux of it. 

“Barry?” 

They’re not doing anything in particular when he decides to talk. He’s paging through a book on dark matter without taking in a single word; Barry is doing a crossword while he waits for a tray of cookies to finish baking. As soon as Hartley speaks, he forsakes his crossword. “What is it?”

“I…” Hartley laughs and shakes his head. He shouldn’t have said anything. “I should tell you—I _need_ to tell you. I want this gone.” 

Barry curls on the other end of the sofa, draws his legs to his chest, and peers at him with wide, soft eyes. “About Thawne?” he ascertains. 

Hartley nods. “I know you know what it was like to adore him,” he says, more for lack of another way to start than because he thinks Barry needs reminded. “And the thing is, I think _he_ knew.”

Slowly, Barry nods. “He played on my hero worship, yeah. And I know you told me you were head over heels from the moment he first visited you.”

Hartley nods. “I was stupid,” he scoffs. “Our first time, I kissed him, I flung myself at him. And—oh, he played me so _well._ He was gentle, kind, everything I wanted, everything I’d never had. When he started to push…by then, we’d been together for months, I was in too deep to back out. And even then, he was careful with me.”

The oven beeps. Barry bolts over to the kitchen, takes the cookies out, and returns before Hartley has had time to blink. “Sorry,” he murmurs, eyes wide. “Don’t stop.” 

Hartley doesn’t know if he can. He has to tell _someone_ —it’s far too lonely not to. “He introduced me to pain bit by bit, got me to like it, got me to need it. Even then, the first time we played really rough, I tried to back out. He told me to wait, see it through, I’d learn to like it. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want him to be upset with me, and he seemed to like it so much...so when he checked with me again at the end of the game I told him I loved it. After that, it was a little challenge I set for myself every time he did something I didn’t like: give it a try, see if I could tolerate it, and even if I still didn’t like it, remind myself that he deserved pleasure more than I deserve comfort.” 

Barry looks like he might be sick. Hartley finds himself glancing down, studying the weave of the blanket instead. He can’t watch Barry’s reaction if he wants to get through the story. 

“I really can’t separate the role he played in making me think that from everything else.” Barry knows what ‘everything else’ encompasses: abandonment issues, inexperience, pre-existing problems with self-worth. “I don’t know if there was something about the way he acted that made me afraid to tell him ‘no’ or if I was just so desperate not to fuck up our relationship that I scared myself out of saying it.” 

“He had to know.” Barry’s voice is barely louder than a whisper, as though he’s afraid to shatter the tentative vulnerability. “He brought you in off the streets. He knew you weren’t going to jeopardize that.” There’s a hint of self-reproach in his tone. He still blames himself for the ill-fated humiliation game. Later, once Hartley has said what he needs to say, he’ll reassure him that he isn’t to blame. 

“Maybe. Maybe it was my own doing.” Hartley forces himself to redirect. “And he never had a chance with you?”

“No.” One of Barry’s hands reaches out. He’s moving slowly enough that Hartley could recoil, but he wants to be held. “I’m so sorry, Hartley. I know you probably won’t believe me, or you will but you’ll need to hear it again, but I never want to push you like he did.”

Hartley nods. He knows that, cerebrally at least: Barry wants nothing more than to be good for him. Viscerally, though, he can’t shake the feeling that Barry’s pleasure should be the priority. (That, too, is selfish. As the humiliation game showed, not saying no when he needs to hurts Barry as well as him.) “I know, sweet boy, but thank you for telling me.” 

They sit in silence for a moment. Hartley counts Barry’s heartbeats for so long that he starts to slip into a trance. He only realizes how much time has passed when Barry offers gently, “I think the cookies are cool now. Do you want one?”

“Hmm?” He almost wishes Barry had let him drift for another few minutes. Still, the heartbeat interlude was exactly what he needed; the prickly, unsafe headspace he fell into while discussing Thawne has utterly faded away. “I think I’d rather keep holding your hand, if that’s all right.” 

“Sure.” Slowly, Barry scoots closer. Hartley shifts so that they’re side by side, their intertwined hands resting on the cushion between them. “What were you reading?” 

“It’s called ‘Dark Cosmos.’” Hartley shows him the cover of the book. “It’s for a lay audience, but I’ve read the research he references, and it's interesting to hear how he explains it for non-scientists. Are you going to read over my shoulder?”

Barry nods. “Unless you want to read it aloud to me?” 

Hartley opens the book to the page where he’d left off. Before he begins to read, Barry shifts closer and lays his head on Hartley’s shoulder. Hartley almost gets lost in his heartbeat again. “…You know how you have that ‘melt’ trigger?” Barry glances up at him, evidently bewildered. “Well, I think I may be developing a thing about your heartbeat.”

Barry's expression softens. “Is that why you looked all peaceful earlier? Because I would totally let you fall asleep to my heartbeat if that’s what you want.” 

“Not fall asleep,” Hartley corrects, feeling bizarrely vulnerable. “Sort of…go down for a while. I think you know what I mean.”

Barry nods. “Like let your head get quiet. I mean, I’d be happy to cuddle and take care of you, if you want to do that.” 

He does. Better still, and more astonishingly, he feels safe enough to say, “Yes,” and mean it.


End file.
